ambitions of those who had built the church in which they were sitting… With life and death, and the never-ending passage of time. With his daughter Jess, who was leaning heavily on him, and occasionally seemed to be convulsed by a shudder. Kinship.
It works, he thought. The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.
The spell was not broken until he processed past the coffin with Jess clinging to his arm — not until he had turned his back on it all and started to leave the chancel. Then he was hit by an ice-cold stab of despair instead; he almost stumbled, and had to cling on to his daughter in order not to fall. He was supporting her, she was supporting him. It seemed a vast distance to Renate on Jess’s other side, and he wondered why he found it necessary to keep her so far away. Why?
And once they were outside the heavy church door, standing in the drizzle, his only thought was: Who killed him? I want to know who it was that killed my son.
Who blew out the flame.
‘I haven’t finished sorting stuff out yet,’ said Marlene Frey. ‘Separating his things from mine, that is. I don’t know what is the usual thing to do in these circumstances. Is there anything you’d like to have?’
Van Veeteren shook his head.
‘Of course not. You lived together. Erich’s things are yours now, naturally.’
They were sitting at a table in Adenaar’s. Marlene Frey was drinking tea, he had a glass of wine. She wasn’t even smoking. He didn’t know why that surprised him, but it did. Erich had started smoking when he was fifteen… probably earlier than that, but it was on his fifteenth birthday that he’d caught him at it.
‘Please feel free to come and have a look a couple of days from now, in any case,’ she said. ‘There might be something you’d like as a souvenir.’
‘Photographs?’ it occurred to him. ‘Do you have any photos? I don’t think I have a single one of Erich from the last ten years.’
She smiled fleetingly.
‘Of course. There are some. A few, at least.’
He nodded, and eyed her guiltily.
‘I apologize for not having called round to see you yet. I have.. There’s been so much to do.’
‘It’s never too late,’ she said. ‘Call in when you have time, and I’ll give you a few pictures. I’m at home in the evenings. Usually, that is — maybe it would be an idea to ring first. We don’t need to make a big thing of it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t.’
She took a drink of her tea, and he sipped his wine as a sort of half-hearted gesture of agreement. Stole a glance at her and decided that she was good-looking. Pale and tired, of course, but with clean-cut features and eyes that met his without deviating as much as a centimetre. He wondered what she had been through in her life. Had she had the same kind of experiences as Erich? It didn’t seem so: the tribulations always seemed to leave deeper traces on women. She’d been through her fair share, of course, he could see that: but there was nothing in her demeanour that suggested a lack of strength.
Strength to see her through life. Yes, he could see that she had that.
It’s disgraceful, he thought. Disgraceful that I haven’t met her until now. In circumstances like these. Obviously, I ought…
But then the Erich-is-dead constellation took possession of him with such force that he almost fainted. He gulped down his wine and took out his cigarette-rolling machine.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
She smiled briefly again.
‘Erich smoked.’
They sat in silence while he rolled, then lit up.
‘I ought to give it up,’ he said. ‘Using this thing helps to cut down at least.’
Why the hell am I sitting here, he thought, going on about smoking? What difference does it make if the father of a dead son smokes too much?
She suddenly placed her hand on his arm. His heart missed a beat and he almost choked on his cigarette. She observed his reaction, no doubt, but did nothing to pretend it was an accident. Nothing to gloss over it. Simply left her hand where it was while looking hard at him with probing, slightly quivering eyes.
‘I think I could get to like you,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity things turned out as they did.’
Turned out as they did? he thought. A pity? Talk about understatement…
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t have more contact with Erich. Naturally, it ought to-’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, interrupting him. ‘He was a bit.. Well, how should one describe it?’ She shrugged. ‘But I loved him. We had good times together, it was as if being together made us grow up, as it were. And then of course there was that special thing.’
He had forgotten all about that.
‘Er, yes,’ he said. ‘What special thing?’
She let go of his arm and gazed down at her cup for a few seconds. Stirred it slowly with her spoon.
‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but the fact is that I’m expecting a child. I’m pregnant, in the third month. Well, that’s how things stand.’
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, and now the smoke really did spark off a coughing fit.
Early on Tuesday morning he drove Jess out to Sechshafen. He had told both her and Renate about the conversation with Marlene Frey: Jess had phoned her on the Monday evening and arranged to meet her the next time she came to Maardam. With a bit of luck around New Year.
The intention had been that Renate should also accompany them to the airport, but apparently she had woken up with a temperature and what seemed to be tonsillitis. Van Veeteren thanked God for the bacilli, and suspected that Jess didn’t have anything against them either.
She held his hand that morning as well as they crawled through the fog enveloping Landsmoor and Weill: it was a warm hand, and occasionally gave his a hard squeeze. He was aware that the squeezes were indications of daughterly love, and the familiar old anxiety that goes with parting. Stronger than ever on a day like this, of course. Separation from her roots in this flat, north European landscape. From Erich. Perhaps also from him.
‘It’s hard to say goodbye,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s hard.’
‘You never get used to it. But I suppose there’s a point to that as well.’
Parting is a little death, he almost added, but he managed to keep that thought to himself.
‘I don’t like airports,’ she said. ‘I’m always a bit frightened when I’m going to travel somewhere. Erich was the same.’
He nodded. He hadn’t known that, in fact. He wondered how much there was he didn’t know about his children. How much he had missed over the years, and how much could still be repaired or discovered.
‘But I didn’t know him all that well,’ she said after a while. ‘I hope I’ll grow to like Marlene — it feels as if through her he’s left traces of himself behind. I hope to goodness all goes well. It would be awful if…’
She didn’t complete the sentence. After a while he noticed that she had started crying, and he gave her hand a long squeeze.
‘It feels better now, at least,’ she said when it had passed. ‘Better than when I came. I’ll never get used to it, but I occasionally feel almost calm now. Or maybe one just feels numb after all the crying. What do you think?’
He muttered something in response. No, he thought. Nothing goes away, it all just gets worse as time passes. Worse every day as you grow older.
As they began to approach the airport she let go of his hand. Took out a paper handkerchief and dried her eyes.
‘Why did you really pack up being a police officer?’
The question came out of the blue, and for a moment he felt on the spot.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I’d just had enough… I suppose that’s the simplest explanation. I felt that quite clearly, I didn’t have to think deeply about it.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I suppose there’s quite a lot one doesn’t need to think deeply about.’
She paused, but he could hear that she had more on her mind. Had a good idea of what it was as well — and
